Alabama´s ("Roll Tide!") Omar Hammami was the subject of this blog´s in-depth post of November 18, 2010 ("Omar Hammami: The Terrorist Next Door.")

Early this month reports surfaced that Omar was killed by the Somali terrorist organization al-Shabaab, of which Omar was a member. Ahmed Abdi Godane, the head of al-Shabaab, reportedly ordered the hit. (Godane also ordered the attack on the Westgate Shopping Mall in Kenya on September 21, 2013, in which over 70 people died.)

We know little about Godane´s socio-economic origins, although he once worked as an accountant. Such is not the case with another Al-Shabaab leader, Abdukadir Mohamed Abdukadir; he is 200-proof middle class.This falling out among middle class rebels is simply the latest episode in a very old story.Equally as old is the U.S. intelligence community´s utter inability to understand how and why such splits among terrorists occur, much less how to create and foster them -- to split, split and split again. I make that assertion because if the boys and girls of the C.I.A. knew what they were doing, not only al-Shabaab but also al-Qaeda´s top man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian M.D., would have been sabotaged themselves years ago. * * *Our post-Snowden world has generated talk in Washington of a top-to-bottom review of the federal government´s spy techniques.Prediction: the end result will be more of the same: new and improved telephone taps, more emails monitored, more and more expensive whiz-bang satellites, more Facebook snooping. U.S. intelligence chiefs are absolutely convinced that at some point quantitative addition will create qualitative change -- just one more email monitored, just one more phone tapped, and Presto McGuillicutty: in a blinding flash this whole terrorist thing will become crystal clear. The fact that electronic gizmos and computer gimmicks have yet to prove they are worth the megabucks they cost is completely beside the point: terrorism is a growth industry. We will present below the basis of a totally new method -- new for the United States -- for understanding why terrorist groups irresistibly and irredeemably tend to break up, splinter. For obvious reasons, we will not make certain extrapolations. Warning: our approach has a singular, insurmountable problem which totally prohibits its implementation by the United States government: there is no money in it.The price is wrong.You want concrete, indisputable proof of zero dollars? See our post of April 29, 2013, "The Boston Marathon Terrorists: Open Letter to Congress on The Tsarnaev Brothers." It explains how the brothers could have been identified within hours of the attack by means of (i) a telephone and (ii) a telephone book.That´s right: not a single phone had to be tapped, not one email opened, not one satellite dialed up, not one Edward Snowden hired. The potential monetary ramifications of our approach are severe indeed. Had it been utilized in Boston, the brothers Tsarnaev would have been caught long before they had the chance to murder M.I.T. officer Sean Collier. F.B.I., Homeland Security et al, you had better get down on your knees and thank God that I am not a relative of Officer Collier. I would sue you so hard, you´d never come down. * * *The underlying cause of the penchant of terrorists to split into factions was presented in 2009 in The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion. An outline of that discussion is presented below.

A necessary preface: our outline contains the names of numerous artists, e.g., Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Tristan Tzara, Compte de Lautréamont, who are essential to understanding middle class rebellion, hence terrorism. The fact that the N.S.A., C.I.A. and F.B.I. never heard of them is only the start of the federal government´s problems.

To increase readability, I have omitted most of the original source citations; for those who want them, see The Source of Terrorism. In order to understand terrorists´ susceptibility to bicker and break up, we start with the general context that gives middle class rebellion its meaning. The Source of Terrorism:Only the middle class can mediate and mollify the sharpest, most profound cleavage of all, the great economic divide separating the rich and the poor. But if the middle class is the reconciler and the balance, it is also the rebel and the extreme. The latter appear when dislocation occurs -- when the prevailing mode of middle class reconciliation is in need of repair. Without class mediation and its reinvigoration via rebellion, Western civilization cannot survive. The middle class, can it continue to play its political role of reconciler? That is the question… If you don´t see how middle class reconcilers and rebels are not just connected but intertwined, see our post of July 13, 2013, "Edward Snowden: Quid Pro Quo Vadis?" By the way, do not feel alone. As our post pointed out, the N.S.A., admits to having a hard time distinguishing reconcilers from rebels working in its own headquarters. As for what to do with the rebels in their ranks...gosh... To underline the debacle: for every single reason why they hired Snowden, I would have rejected him. What difference does it make? Well, Washington´s future prospects for identifying and handling rebels are dim/dimmer/dimmest. Ergo, The Big Surprise: expect more Snowdens. * * * “But to my mind…it is a custom More honour’d in the breach than the observance.” -- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene 4 -- "Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?" "Whaddaya got?" -- Marlon Brandon, "The Wild One," 1953 --

How does middle class rebellion start? The Source of Terrorism:

Middle class rebellion customarily makes its initial appearance in opposition to what the rebel sees and feels in his everyday world: the prevailing mode of reconciliation produced and maintained by his socio-economic class. Unknown to the rebel, that mode contains the same cult of contradiction he will exercise, albeit formed in a former phase, differently attired. That is how, from the very outset, in refusing he accepts, in denying he affirms.

The problem is that, due to some severe disturbance or dislocation, the prevailing reconciliation mode has become unsatisfactory. But in the rebel’s mind, something inadequate is transformed preter-realistically into something evil. Life is not heaven, he concludes; therefore, it must be hell.

In the initial phase of rebellion -- the cult of contradiction -- the rebel is the man who says "No!" He separates himself out. How long he will stay there is problematic. During the prior two centuries, middle class rebellion created and cultivated five major contradictions: (1) Total intellectualism and total anti-intellectualism. (2) Absolute violence and absolute pacifism. (3) High moral principles and immoral practices. (4) Complete insubordination and complete submission. (5) Total revolution and total reaction. On numerous occasions, rebels vacillated between the opposing extremes, often with fatal results. To give the reader a taste of what is involved in the cult of contradiction, I will present here only part of (5) total revolution and total reaction. The Source of Terrorism: ... for the middle class rebel, violence is total, apocalyptic. As would be expected, revolution floats around in the same cataclysmic clouds: · Rimbaud demanded: "And total vengeance? Nothing!…-- But yes, indeed total, We want it! Industrialists, princes, senates -- Perish! Power, justice, history -- Down with them! That is owed to us. Blood! Blood! The flame of Gold!" There was blood -- on July 10, 1873, Brussels. Paul Verlaine woke up early, went out and bought a revolver. He returned to the lodging he was sharing with his mother and Rimbaud. Around noon, Verlaine displayed the gun to Rimbaud, announcing, “This is for you, for me, for the entire world.” A few hours later, another quarrel broke out. Drunk, Verlaine shouted, “I'll teach you to want to leave me!” He fired two bullets at Rimbaud who was some ten feet away; the first wounded Rimbaud in the wrist, the second missed him. That evening, Rimbaud called the police. Verlaine was given the maximum sentence for criminal assault: two years of hard labor and a fine of two hundred francs.· Bakunin claimed that anarchism "aspires to a universal revolution, simultaneously social, philosophical, economic and political, so that of the present order of things, based on property, exploitation, and the principle of authority, whether religious, metaphysical, bourgeois-doctrinaire, or even Jacobin-revolutionary, not a stone will be left standing first in Europe and then in the rest of the world." Marx and Engels remarked of Bakunin’s statement: “Here indeed we have revolutionary revolutionism!” Not a stone will be left standing. But...what was anarchist practice? Total revolution? In 1873, Marx and Engels’ group, The International Working Men’s Association, kicked Bakunin out of its ranks. Their Report concluded of the anarchists: "Here we have a society which, under the mask of the most extreme anarchism, directs its blows not against the existing governments but against the revolutionaries who refuse to accept its dogma and leadership...[I]t infiltrates the ranks of the international organisation of the working class, at first attempts to dominate it and, when this plan fails, sets to work to dis-organise it….[W]e cannot regard them otherwise than as traitors or dupes." · Tristan Tzara trumpeted in his “Dada Manifesto 1918” that “we are not sentimental. We are tearing apart…and we are preparing the great spectacle of disaster, fire, decomposition.” In 1921, Francis Picabia began to back away from Tzara and Dadaism. No doubt to the dismay of those who had taken at face value Tzara’s statements favoring disaster and decomposition, Picabia complained in an article in L’Esprit nouveau that Dada “has now a tribunal and lawyers, and soon probably a police.”Soon came two years later. Tzara put together the Evening of The Bearded Heart, consisting of poetry, dances, movies, plays. Pierre de Massot read out a proclamation containing ambiguous comments about Picabia, Picasso, Gide, and Duchamp. Using the pretext of defending Picasso, André Breton, Robert Desnos, and Benjamin Peret charged onto the stage and demanded that de Massot leave. When de Massot refused, Breton swung his cane and broke de Massot’s arm. The angry crowd moved toward Breton; Tzara summoned the police who were standing by. Breton and his friends were tossed out of the auditorium. Later, the poet Paul Eluard demanded that Tzara explain himself. When Tzara appeared on stage, Eluard dashed up and hit Tzara. Actors, stagehands, and Tzara’s assistants beat up Eluard. The anti-climax: Tzara sued Eluard for eight thousand francs in damages.· The Willich/Schapper faction of Marx’s Communist League broke with Marx for not being revolutionary enough. Shortly thereafter, Willich/Schapper demonstrated what true and authentic revolution was by…co-operating with the Prussian police against the Marxists in the Cologne Communist Trial of 1852. Total revolution allocated to some unspecified time in some undetermined future: a thing is its limits. And the belief in THE revolution reveals a basic limit of middle class rebellion. The power to leave -- but not go too far. The reluctance to pursue ultimate consequences appears when violence and revolution approach their limits whether in thought or in action. The rebel does not just turn around; when he returns home, he lands hard, with both feet

You just saw the embryo of a tendency to quarrel, break up. It will fully develop when the cult of contradiction has run its course. I will not discuss here the various stages the rebel goes through during the cult of contradiction. Let it suffice to say that eventually he ends up where he started off: exhaustion. The Source of Terrorism:

Camus observed that the rebel finds himself “delivered over to the passing moment, to the passing days, and to wasted sensibility.”:

“Great!” Rimbaud sputtered, “Another hour; afterward, nameless ills!”

From Baudelaire’s poem, “Bad Luck”:

"Far from famous tombs, Towards an isolated cemetery, My heart, like a veiled drum, Goes beating out funeral marches."

The days that are passing keep passing. The inner exhaustion exhausts everything except one thing: exhaustion itself. The rebel is fed up with everything except with being fed up:

Baudelaire’s despair: “As for me, my arms are broken from having embraced clouds.”

Lautréamont claimed that one’s “wings get very tired, in a high flight without hope and without regret.”

The rebel´s "No!" is replaced by "Enough!" -- enough of the cult of contradiction. But where will the rebel go? What will he do? Answer: more of the same -- the contradiction of contradiction, i.e., the cult of synthesis. The Sourceof Terrorism:

…the cult of synthesis is not what it presents itself to be, the opposite of the cult of contradiction. Rather, the cult of synthesis is simply the logical extension of the cult of contradiction after the latter has run the gamut of objects in its environment -- that cult turned inward, against itself.

The middle class conforms by rebelling, and in so doing, it changes the dominant form of adaptation and conformity, viz., its mode of reconciliation. Equally true but less understood is that the middle class rebels by conforming, i.e., conformism in extremis ….

Underlying the cult of synthesis is the beginning of the settlement of the dislocation that generated rebellion. The problem: how to incorporate what the cult of contradiction made manifest into the prevailing reconciliation mode?

Middle class rebellion cultivates synthesis or re-integration in three areas: (1) the “I” or the individual ego to which the rebel limits and equates the self; (2) the Other; and (3) Active Inactivity.

It is reincorporation in the individual ego that interests us here. The ego as an absolute truth, an idée fixe, is not only the key to why middle class rebels/terrorists quibble and splinter into factions; it is also a major reason why they are attracted to terrorism in the first place. The Source of Terrorism:

Camus concluded that the rebel has the utmost need to guard his singularity, even at the cost of doing evil. Thus, the rebel à la Baudelaire “creates the garden of evil where crime figures as one of the rarer, more highly prized species. Terror itself becomes an exquisite sensation and a collector’s item.”:

·Indeed, Baudelaire praised the “pretty designs” of “rape, poison, the dagger, fire…,” and lauded that

· “I took up arms against justice,” Rimbaud professed in the spirit of immorality as a game-board pastime:

“‘You will remain a hyena, etc.…’ screams the demon who crowned me with such nice poppies. ‘Go to your death with all your lusts and your egoism and all your capital sins.’ Oh, I’ve taken on too much. But, Dear Satan, I beg you, show a less irritated eye!...From my Gallic ancestors…I inherit: idolatry and love of sacrilege, oh! All the vices: anger, lust -- it is magnificent, lust -- and above all, lies and laziness.”

· Lautréamont’s variety of crime as a hobby: “As for me, I’m going to put my genius in the service of painting the delights of cruelty!” Elsewhere, he told/ordered, “I have no reason to lie….I don’t envy the Creator; may he leave me to my destiny -- a rising series of glorious crimes.”

Lautréamont’s declaration ushers in a key point. Above all else, in his search for synthesis within his ego, the middle class rebel prizes the genius, the different, the special, the unknown, the Character, the unique, the exception, the new, the eccentric:

· Rimbaud, who exalted the “unknown” in his famous “seer” letter, also glorified “Genius” in perhaps the last poem he wrote:

"He is affection and future, force and love which we, standing up in rage and boredom, see pass in the sky of storm and flags of ecstasy….

He knew us all and loved us all. May we, this winter night, from cape to cape, from the tumultuous pole to the castle, from the crowd to the beach, from regard to regards, with our tired forces and sentiments, hail him and see him, and send him on his way, and, under the tides and on the summits of deserts of snow, follow what he sees, his breathing, his body, his day."

· Baudelaire requested of Death not life but novelty:

"Pour upon us your poison so as to comfort us! We want, as much as the fire burns our brain, To plunge to the bottom of the gulf, Hell or Heaven, what does it /matter?To the bottom of The Unknown in order to find the new!"

· Dadaist leader Tristan Tzara had the same final word as Baudelaire: “Dada has succeeded in establishing the circuit of absolute unconsciousness in the audience, which forgot the frontiers of education of prejudices, to experience the commotion of the new.”

· Lautréamont, who found God seated on a throne of gold and excrement, teased the reader: “You must agree that my ideas are singular.” He asserted that Genius -- which he wanted to serve cruelty -- “is the supreme health and the equilibrium of all faculties.”As a core of the unity the rebel yearns for, the mystified individual ego in middle class rebellion´s synthesis phase compels rebels to split, split and split again.

The Source of Terrorism:

Given the axiom that the individual ego is the home of the ultimate truth, it is inevitable that whenever individual rebels get together, collective problems erupt:

· The violent Rimbaud/Verlaine spat is legendary.

· The Dadaists broke into Picabia/Tzara/Breton/Huelsenbeck factions. They engaged in endless spats over who invented the collage and even who came up with the word Dada.

· Karl Marx wrote of the German exiles living in London:

"There they all sat, the members of parliament, the deputies of Chambers, the generals, the Club orators of the halcyon days of 1848 and 1849, they smoked their pipes just like ordinary people and debated the loftiest interests of the fatherland day after day, in public and with unshakable dignity. This was the place where for the price of a few bottles of extremely cheap wine the German citizen…could learn to within a minute when ‘it would all start.’ "

Because the true organisation of the Emigration was this “tavern organisation,” spirited disputes were unavoidable. Marx:

"The privations of individuals, intrigues, plots, self-praise -- the heroes spent their energies in such paltry activities. But the Emigration did have one achievement to its credit: a history of its own, lying outside world history, with its own political pettifoggery running parallel to public affairs. And the very fact that they fought each other so bitterly led each to believe in the importance of the other. Beneath the facade of all these strivings and conflicts lay the speculation in democratic party funds….”

Marx described the clamorous end of an effort to end all clamorous infighting: “To the accompaniment of shouts, drumming, crashes, threats and raging the edifying meeting went on until 2 a.m. when the landlord turned off the gas and so plunged the heated antagonists into darkness. This brought all plans to save the nation to an abrupt end.”

Individualism for everybody gives birth to cliquishness. As exemplified by Marx’s exiles, the political polish shines brightly: a corps of generals without any troops...

The political manifestations of the cult of synthesis in the “I” may be none at all or -- just as easily -- everything:

Lautréamont brandished the ego against not just politics but the entire world, exalting the one “who has denied everything, mother, father, Providence, love, ideal, with the end of only thinking of himself...”

As for the opposite, completely political manifestation, Marx described the exiled Harro Harring:

"In Greece and Brazil, on the Vistula and La Plata, in Schleswig-Holstein and in New York, in London and in Switzerland: the representative of Young Europe and of the South American Humanidad, painter, night watchman and employee, peddler of this own writings; among Poles one day and gauchos the next, and ship’s captains the day after that, unacknowledged, abandoned, ignored, but everywhere an itinerant knight of freedom with a thoroughgoing dislike for ordinary bourgeois hard work -- our hero at all times in all countries and in all circumstances remains himself; with the same confusion, the same meddlesome pretensions, the same faith in himself. He will always defy the world and never cease to say, write and print that since 1831, he has been the main spring of world history."

… Viewed historically, the middle class fixation on the Individual Personality is a residue of the highly personal master/apprentice relationship, the hallmark of the feudal guilds.** … personalismo is especially visible in countries where middle class rebels seized political control. Their feudal guild-based heritage and cliquish behavior ... forever compel them to strive to convert friendship into a formal structure -- instead of making a formal structure friendly.

In its denunciation of Omar Hammami in December of 2012, the al-Shabaab leadership attributed the source of the rift to Hammami´s "narcissistic pursuit of fame." Psych 101 students, take note: al-Shabaab´s word choice is a textbook case of unconscious psychological projection. Ditto childish petulance, superficial allegations, frivolous ramblings, whimsical desires.

In other words, for readers of The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion the whole al-Shabaab-Omar Hammami scene is incorrigibly old hat. Source provides other case studies of the same split, split and split again phenomenon, e.g., the trials and tribulations of the "partisan leader."

What is to be done?

Answer: usher the rebel/terrorist through the cult of contradiction phase and into the cult of synthesis. To repeat, it is in the synthesis phase that breaking into schisms moves from a latent to a manifest condition.

Having no idea whatsoever of the psycho-social and ideological dynamics involved, Washington executes exactly the opposite tactic, viz., retaining terrorists in the cult of contradiction. This month´s case study: the November 1, 2013 killing in a drone attack of Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud who was engaged in peace talks with the government of Pakistan.

U.S. military and intelligence agency personnel, let´s go ahead and call your tactic what it is:

Barnstorming incompetence.

* * *

Our less-intrusive, less-costly, more effective approach has another advantage all the satellites and telephone taps and email monitorings and Facebook snooping and Microsoft eavesdropping put together cannot match: it cannot be co-opted.

Spy chiefs are complaining that, as a result of Snowden´s leaks, terrorists are "rubbing their hands in glee" and changing their methods. No such changes or other adjustments are possible to our method...

Let there be no mistake: terrorists read this blog. Terrorists, you cannot learn anything useful from this post any more than can the C.I.A., F.B.I., Homeland Security or N.S.A., and for exactly the same reason.

You can change hats; you can change tactics. You can change leaders; you can change addresses. You can change habits, you can change names. You cannot change who you are._______________

*And What Shall I Love If Not The Enigma?”

**Michel Foucault identified as follows

"the defining characteristics of guild apprenticeship: a relationship of dependence simultaneously individual and total vis-à-vis the master; a fixed duration of training that is completed by a qualifying proof, but that cannot be broken down into a precise program; a wide exchange between the master who should give his knowledge and the apprentice who should give his services, his aid, and often a remittance. A form of domesticity is mixed with a transfer of knowledge." Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir, Gallimard, Paris, 2000, pp. 183-4.

NOTE: the prior two posts analyzing my screenplay, "Pillars of The Sea," received well over a 1,000 visitors. This post completes our "Pillars" exposition. * * *

"I sent my Soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that After-life to spell: And by and by my Soul return'd to me, And answer'd "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell:" -- Omar Khayyam, "The Rubaiyat" (1120 A.D.) --

Omar Khayyam´s stunning words pick up where our prior post left off.

"Until Latin America accepts its tabooed Indian origin as an undissolvable and indispensable part of its self-identity, it will be incapable of confronting the dos mundos paradox, much less of transforming it into something valued ..."

Recognizing the heaven/hell unity within us is both a prerequisite and a result of accepting and integrating constructively one´s psychological "shadow," i.e., the collection of "bad" traits we have but reject and deny, hence project onto other people such as Indians.

What´s that? You believe no such unity exists -- that heaven and hell, good and evil, are separate and distinct?

Read on...

David S., you inquired about the source of the character of Comandante Lentes other than what was discussed in our prior post, viz., his origin in Aztec mythology, Tezcatlipoca, god of fortune and discord.

Your question can be answered on two levels, historical and personal.

Lentes´ mocking face -- a mask as well as reality -- sums him up. Its historical origin is the muse Thalia in Greek mythology and theater. (For more on this subject, click here.) As we shall see, Thalia´s archetype is by no means limited to classical antiquity.

On the personal level:

When I was a preschooler I watched my mother hang two decorative masks on the wall. I asked her what they meant; she explained they represented comedy and tragedy (see image above). In a bolt from the blue, a thought struck me:

That´s wrong. The tragedy man is angry, that´s all. In a few minutes he´ll get over it. The comedy man is different. If he comes after you, there´s no escape.

An unconscious archetype had welled up. Psychotherapist Carl Jung identified it as the Trickster Figure. Components of the human psyche, unconsciousness archetypes are in all Homo sapiens. The archetypes are the same everywhere and in all epochs; however, different cultures develop them differently. In the United States the trickster archetype takes various forms, some more malevolent than others, e.g., The Joker (Batman), Froggie The Gremlin, Mickey Rooney in "The Comedian," James Cagney in "White Heat," and in native American culture, the coyote. It is crucial to note that in the ancient Greek world, comedy and tragedy were aspects of the same thing: the god Dionysus. Dionysus is the Greek counterpart of Xipe Totec, the Aztec god on which Dion Totec, the hero of "Pillars of The Sea," is based.In brief, Dionysus and Xipe Totec are cultural manifestations of the same unconscious archetype.

The unity of two opposites, tragedy and comedy, in Dionysus raises this highly-charged question: is there a relationship between good and evil, more particularly between Dion and his tormentor, Comandante Lentes?Are they interdependent? Indeed, are they halves of the same whole?In the washroom scene in "Pillars," an ancient midwife prayer is recited in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. The oration raises the otherwise inconceivable -- if not blasphemous -- possibility that Dion´s ill baby could have been born evil. Who knows? The midwife prayer assists the birth of a new way -- which is in reality a very old way -- of perceiving good and evil:

An interrelationship between good and evil clearly existed in the pre-Christian world.The Book of Job, arguably the oldest book in the Bible, relates that one day Satan visited God:

"7 And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. 8 And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? 9 Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought? 10 Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. 11 But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face. 12 And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord."Not only did God and Satan (i) meet, they (ii) conversed. Moreover, God (iii) listened to him, and (iv) they made a covenant. The New Testament did not continue, much less develop, this richness of text.The idea that good and evil are connected exists in the United States, albeit in a stunted form. In "The Dark Knight" the murderous Joker tells Batman, "You complete me!" What was not said -- it cannot be said in America -- is that the Joker also completes Batman. The thought that Batman could in any way identify with the criminals he pursues -- that Superman, the Man of Steel, might occasionally steal -- is taboo.We will see why in a moment.In "Pillars of The Sea" the position that good and evil are not mutually exclusive is expressed in the pivotal scene foreshadowed by the midwife prayer. In the "orphanage" -- in reality a secret police death camp where Comandante Lentes imprisoned Dion -- Lentes asks Dion: "At times, it is difficult for me to see you clearly. My ´Red Mirror´: is it that you are but an aspect of me?"

That question, which comes directly from Aztec texts, opens up the good/evil thematic point. "Pillars" resolves it in the climax when Lentes´ Thalia mask is removed. I won´t spoil the movie by presenting the solution here. However, I will raise a pertinent issue...Who is the third who walks always beside you?When I count, there are only you and I together. -- T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land" --What is Lentes -- really? Does he exist "out there" or is he a way of looking at things -- a way that is inside every one of us? Or, finally, is he somehow both subjective and objective? Consider psychosomatic pain. You can tell somebody feeling it that it isn´t "real" -- but it certainly is real to the sufferer. Thanks to science, we know now that it is not "just in his mind." In much the same way, conscious as well as unconscious elements, when involved in social interactions, can give birth to "third things." Culture and politics are loaded with them.

The most widely known case is the Cold War, which was at bottom an ideological inversion of Hot Peace. Marine Corps General and former commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command, Anthony Zinni, described perfectly what was entailed when he reflected on the meaning of being a military officer 1960-2000:"The Cold War was a 40-year attempt to refight World War II if ever the need arose. We were energized to engage in a global conflict against the evil Red Menace. The problem was that we never could figure just how this particular war would actually start... The Cold War was ever present, and it was great for justifying programs, systems and force structure -- but no one seriously believed that it would actually happen. Still, it drove things. It drove the way we thought, it drove the way we organized and equipped, and it drove the way we developed our concepts of fighting."*It drove things. You can argue all you want that a "third thing" is not real -- but it certainly does exist for those who participate in or otherwise experience it. By means of social interactions, inner psychic forces can constellate an outer corporal form that, even if it does not "really" exist, it might as well. I know of no word for this phenomenon, the third who walks always beside you. A psychosoma? Something that is neither entirely subjective nor objective, psychic nor material, but both?** An as-if world that is not as-if but real? A ghost? How much of our existence consists of psychosomas? * * *Jack D., I am glad you liked Comandante Lentes´ "sterling dialogue." Much of it comes directly from Aztec texts and poems. I will say it again: they are great art. Elsewhere, I had no choice but to extrapolate, and that was when a conundrum arose: how to retain the spirit of Tezcatlipoca, the trickster archetype on which Comandante Lentes is based. The same problem of course appeared for the other "Pillars" characters, but Lentes was the most challenging.

Musicology proved to be the key. If you can hear a character´s signature song, you can hang things on it. Jack,"Pillars of The Sea" was composed, not written.As the decades passed, I came to realize that Aztec myths and legends were bits and pieces of a symphony -- unfinished, because stone by stone the Spaniards tore apart the Aztec world. In every word of every "Pillars" dialogue, the challenge was, as musicians say, "to hit the top of the note" in a musical score that had gaping holes and missing pages.

The starting place for recovering destroyed material was to research the counterparts of Aztec myths and legends in other cultures. To repeat, archetypes are the same in all times and places, but different cultures develop them differently. An illustrative case: Adriana, wife of Dion Totec, is based on Xochiquetzal, goddess of femininity and beauty, about whom we know too little. Her Greek counterpart is Ariadne, goddess of weaving. You will see the famous statue of the reclining Ariadne in the Giorgio de Chirico painting at the top of this post; "Pillars" uses Ariadne´s posture in Adriana´s flashback scene. Also, please note de Chirico´s red and yellow colors -- passion plus caution -- analyzed in our prior post. de Chirico combined them with green, the color of initiation. In Aztec mythology, green is another of Xipe Totec´s designated colors. More on de Chirico shortly. To a man, Hollywood script consultants criticized the unusual care "Pillars" accorded to dialogue. One of them called the screenplay a "genetic throw-back" to times gone by; I could not agree with him more. James Cagney once said that the goal of Vaudeville, where he learned his trade, was to give the audience "something they could take home." Hopefully, the "Pillars" dialogues will give them more than one thing to leave the theater with, to make their own.But, why were the consultants so upset?

Movie-makers today will tell you that dialogue has only one purpose: move the action. Look out! Duck! Now! In short, they do not see dialogue as a form of action. Shakespeare, of course, showed otherwise. Two notes:

(i) Way over 50% of the audience in Shakespeare´s day was illiterate. Anybody who has worked with illiterates knows they are ear-learners; to survive, they have no choice. Which is to say: illiterates develop abilities the rest of us lack; in particular, they are far more attentive to the spoken word. The proof is

(ii) in the1500s and 1600s, Shakespeare´s plays were performed much faster than today (we know this fact from ancient program schedules). If you ran his plays now at their original speed, the audience would be immediately and irredeemably lost.

Nevertheless, even though today certain abilities of yesteryear are rare if not extinct, millions of people everywhere still enjoy Shakespearian Theater, albeit slowed down. And so, Hollywood establishment, you who say good dialogue is a waste of time in our "new" age of computerized special effects, video games, graphic sex, Photo Shop, Rambo, car chases, Lady Gaga, the Internet, gratuitous violence, explosions: in reality, are you simply incapable of writing good dialogue?If you can write it, where is it? * * *

Marta L. wants to know if, given the impossibility of production of "Pillars of The Sea" in the foreseeable future, do I feel "frustrated, angry." No more than anybody else, Marta, when I listen to today´s popular music (or rather, do not listen to it); turn on -- I mean off -- the TV; or go -- in reality, do not go -- to the movies. In 1985, when I started "Pillars," I realized I would not live to see it produced, but decided to write it anyway. Why?

All around me I saw a 24-hour, wall-to-wall, dead puppet show. The spectacle was christened by Neil Postman in Technopoly as "symbol drain" which he defined as "the trivialization of significant cultural symbols.... Through prints, lithographs, photographs, and later, movies and television, religious and national symbols became commonplaces, breeding indifference, if not necessarily contempt." (pp. 165-6) “One picture, we are told, is worth a thousand words. But a thousand pictures, especially if they are of the same object, may not be worth anything at all... The extent of symbol overload and therefore symbol drain is unprecedented in human history... The constraints are so few that we may call this a form of cultural rape, sanctioned by an ideology that gives boundless supremacy to technological progress and is indifferent to the unraveling of tradition.” (pp. 166, 170)

Cultural rape -- unprecedented, indifferent, unlimited, sanctioned. My response: "Pillars of The Sea."*** It goes directly against the flow of symbol drain, of unraveling tradition. The screenplay journeys upstream to ancient times, when symbols were born. The purpose of the expedition: restore lost vitality.

One of our previous posts, "The Source of bin Laden´s Charisma" (November 16, 2010) gave a specific example of an original unity of two symbols. In ancient Rome, one word, sacer, meant both sacred and filthy. Only later were the two phenomena differentiated. Nevertheless, residues remain of the original unity. Bill Clinton, for example, is simultaneously "Mr. President" whose autograph is sought and a "dirty politician."

Reviving long-lost interconnections among words and other symbols, then, renews energy, significance, involvement, excitement.The political repercussions of differentiating good from evil are monumental. The oligarchy running America wants you to passively accept as a priori truths symbol drain and cultural rape -- to believe that it is a black and white world out there in which, among other things, the good guys are the C.I.A./ N.S.A. and the bad guys are the terrorists In reality, the interrelationships between them are as astounding as they are necessary:

The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion analyzed how the moderate middle class man -- intelligence agencies are loaded with them -- is indissociable from the middle class rebel. Without the rebel, the moderator cannot fulfill his socio-political function of class reconciliation. The rebel, for his part, is inconceivable apart from the middle class moderator/mediator, the rebel´s procreator to whom the rebel, if he lives long enough, not only returns but emulates.

The Source of Terrorism highlighted the rebel/reconciler connection: "Can the former exist without the latter? The possessed of Dostoevsky have stronger ties to the Babbitts of Sinclair Lewis than normally meets the eye." (p. 252). Ditto the terrorists and the C.I.A. One could say that bin Laden, who once worked with the C.I.A., was in various aspects a "third thing," a psychosoma. Ditto Edward Snowden.

To conclude this point, Marta: the complex, original unity of good and evil, their inseparability and mutual dependency, is rapidly disappearing due to differentiation/specialization. Specialization is a defining characteristic of capitalism; you don´t have the latter without the former. No doubt, specialization increases economic productivity. But specialization, if it is out of control, also results in symbol drain, i.e., cultural rape.

By resurrecting primeval unities such as good/evil and the robustness of their symbols, "Pillars" cuts against specialization, the grain of our socio-economic system. You just saw, Marta, one more reason why the movie will not be produced in your lifetime.

Footnote: I must say, Marta, that I certainly am not frustration-free. The production of "Pillars of The Sea" would have created an economic development hub. The building of the set for Don Heráclito´s domain, which is based on the legendary gardens of the Aztec poet-king, Nezahualcóyotl, as well as the set for the factory where Dion worked, would have created hundreds of jobs for artisans of all sorts. A lot of families would have been fed. I must add that although "Pillars" takes place in Mexico, over 80% of it can be filmed anywhere -- Canada, Ecuador, England, South Africa. An apartment, after all, is an apartment. * * *

Chava J., you wonder, where I am going from here?I am gathering material for another work of fiction rooted in archetypes in pre-Columbian culture, this time Inca and Cañari. (Two basic texts: Cristobal de Molina, Relación de las fabulas y ritos de los incas, Madrid, 1989, and Jacinto Jijón y Camaño, La religión del imperio de los incas, Quito, 1931.) A direct projection of the unconscious, the Cañari synthetic table of mythology (see image above) invites -- irresistibly, it seems -- scholarly studies. I carry it with me and ponder it in free moments; I am dissatisfied with all existing attempts to decipher it. My intuition tells me it contains the seed of a great drama. * * *No, Joe S., I do not believe "Pillars" is a lost cause in the long run.

Let us assume that, for the time being, Latin America cannot assimilate its Indian shadow (see prior post), that it will go on denying and marginalizing its native origins. Result: unconscious ambivalence will continue to prevail, thereby producing and maintaining the region´s condition of cultural and political dependency, of colony. However, as the United States declines as a world empire and China rises -- Russia too should not be counted out --, there will come a time when opposing international powers will be equal but divided. Freed from unified external hegemony, Latin America will finally have its moment in the sun to bring to fruition its unique self-identity. Nobody knows when that period will come or how long it will last -- or if Latin America will seize the moment. If it does, "Pillars" becomes viable.

Joe, there is a second reason why there is hope for "Pillars" in the long term:

For insight into capitalism, we turn to two men who understood two of its rudimentary processes:(i) Back in the 1830s, when the earth was still warm, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the artisan who in an aristocracy sells his goods at a high price to a few, eventually realizes that in a nation such as America,"the more expeditious way of getting rich is to sell them at a low price to all... he strives to invent methods that may enable him not only to work better, but more quickly and more cheaply; or if he cannot succeed in that, to diminish the intrinsic quality of the thing he makes, without rendering it wholly unfit for the use for which it is intended. When none but the wealthy had watches, they were almost all very good ones; few are now made that are worth much, but everybody has one in his pocket."****

Those quicker, better, less costly methods of film production are on the way. Capitalism not only assures their arrival but also will put them in (almost) everybody´s pocket. Movie-making software already exists but is in its initial stages. Looking to the future, instead of obscene $100-million budgets and the neurotic Cult of The Contact, to make a film will require (i) a person, (ii) a computer, and (iii) a film software package. Look around, movie fans: a lot of what you are seeing is becoming the dead hand of the dead past. (ii) But even if you had the new, better, cheaper technology, you probably believe you lack the savoir-faire to make a movie.

Enter rudimentary capitalist process number 2 -- the standardization and routinization of knowledge.

In 1776, when capitalism was in its infancy and the truth could still be told without censorship, marginalization or imprisonment, Adam Smith wrote.

"Long apprenticeships are altogether unnecessary. The arts, which are much superior to common trades, such as those of making clocks and watches, contain no such mystery as to require a long course of instruction. The first invention of such beautiful machines, indeed, and even that of some of the instruments employed in making them, must, no doubt, have been the work of deep thought and long time, and may justly be considered as among the happiest efforts of human ingenuity. But when both have been fairly invented and are well understood, to explain to any young man, in the completest manner, how to apply the instruments and how to construct the machines cannot well require more than the lessons of a few weeks; perhaps those of a few days might be sufficient."*****

The standardization/routinization of knowledge -- its simplification and downgrading -- was analyzed in depth in The Source of Terrorism (chapter 2). That process has dire consequences for the modern middle class whose economic bedrock is higher knowledge and training required to complete complex tasks.

To conclude this discussion, Joe, nobody can foresee the consequences of the coming revolution in movie-making. However, with every man a director, the prospects for production of "Pillars" expand a thousand-fold. * * *

Jerry A. and Robert P., you want to know more about the political economics of "Pillars." I will refer only obliquely to this subject. At the bottom of all economics are human values. Contrary to what you suggest, Robert, "Pillars" does not try to create new values, which currently is not possible; rather, it seeks to reorder old ones. That change is necessary for humanity to survive the approaching, unprecedented epoch in world history of absolute scarcities of absolute necessities -- air, water, food.The alternative to the reordering of values: endless wars. * * *

Roberto R., I worked as a tool and die maker. The factory scenes in "Pillars" were based on realities of the 1969 period. 99.9% of the world´s population has never seen an industrial die; consequently, they have no idea how a spoon is made. No wonder they feel alienated. Dies as sculptures, as art, is surely one of the best kept secrets of all times. No tool and die maker, nor anybody who has worked with one, will dispute that conclusion; it explains why tool and die makers are the kings of the blue collar class. To gaze inside an industrial die is to enter an abstract, miniature city of unbelievable shining precision -- a magical jewelry box. Ancient Tenochtitlan (see image above) evokes the same strangeness and wonder.

The god of rebirth, Xipe Totec, on whom Dion Totec was modeled, was associated in Aztec mythology not only with agricultural renewal but also with metal workers. The Aztecs made that remarkable, unexpected association, and, as "Pillars" demonstrates, with good cause. I add that Dion´s wife, Adriana (Xochiquetzal), was the protectress of metal workers and artists; Dion was both.

The long and the short of it, Roberto: my factory experience gave me the tools to dismantle postmodernism, which is nothing but the ideology of middle class moderation and reconciliation gone to seed. As The Source of Terrorism discusses, "in our age of postmodernism truths are not only multiple but parallel, serial but discontinuous, additive and not cumulative, and if conflicting, allowed to conflict. In the arts, process and reality are no longer separate: process is reality, the only reality. That reality consists of sensations -- a steady, Heraclitian shower of sensations produced by colors, materials, tastes, tactile touches, smells, sounds, sweat, sex, violence.[We are caught in] an endless present without beginning or end ... in which the subjective and the objective worlds, principles and practices, forms and substances, Flipper and feldspar, thoughts and things ... appear one-after-another on an endlessly-moving conveyor belt that carries them along and does not sort anything out or go somewhere." (p. 332).Postmodernism = cultural rape. It ultimately serves only one purpose: legitimize domination by the powerful, i.e., justify the rule of, by and for the oligarchy.The last scene of "Pillars" tears off and throws away postmodernism´s ideological stamp of approval -- one more reason why, Roberto, the movie will not be produced in your lifetime.

Industrial dies are art? Then what is art? I conclude with a line I took home from the movie "Georgia O´Keeffe" uttered by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz: "Art isn´t art until some rich person buys it." Was he right? If so, why? The relationship between art and commerce is a corollary -- one among many -- of the dos mundos contradiction at the heart of "Pillars of The Sea."

* * *Jenny J., you inquired about the reference on the first page of "Pillars" to the artist Giorgio de Chirico.

All movies have -- or should have -- a palette of colors, tones, textures, forms. I studied de Chirico for three years, figuring out how he instilled such an acute sense of suspense and tension -- the feeling that something is about to happen. As I stood for hours in front of his paintings in European exhibitions, a central conclusion imposed itself: a "de Chirico movie" would be a marvel. A master magician, his tricks will forever astonish. So as not to spoil de Chirico´s show, I will reveal only one here:

Infancy is a time when the world is truly a wondrous place. As we "mature," i.e., turn into cynical adults, those early feelings and sensations are suppressed; they do not vanish but fall into the unconscious. To revive them, de Chirico stirs the soup with colors and forms of toys; some are more obvious than others. What he resusitates is a year-old infant´s feeling of radiant, open-ended awe.

To activate the unconscious, "Pillars of The Sea" adopts de Chirico´s toy-technique; obviously, colors and forms will have to be updated so as to resonate with audiences of the future. I did not develop this point here because the "Pillars" script in this blog is a "spec script," viz., only the core story is presented, not camera angles, etc.

Moving pictures, they were called a long time ago. Here, too, "Pillars of The Sea" is a throwback to a vanished era. Fellini´s "8 1/2" (1963) is a case in point. You can randomly cut out any frame in the film, blow it up, and hang it on your wall. You will have an artwork that will astound your friends -- you too. * * *Eddie L., you wnat to know if I had specific actors in mind when I wrote the script. Answer: no. Again, I was focused on archetypes, not individuals. However, it did occur to me in the 1980s after finishing the initial drafts that Donald Sutherland could have played Lentes. Another prospect for the part: French actor Richard Bohringer.

The fact of the matter is, Eddie, I favor nonactors. This approach was used in one of the greatest movies ever made, Vittorio De Sica´s"The Bicycle Thief." Not only can nonactors generate a feeling of raw reality and authenticity difficult to achieve with actors but also new people are given the opportunity to have careers.

Obviously, to create great performances by nonactors, a great director is required. I know of no one alive today in De Sica´s league. I did not say no such director exists; I said I don´t know who he is.

Do you? * * *Françoise S., you want to know why in the final scene everyone who helped make "Pillars" -- cameramen, gaffers, secretaries -- appears on camera as attendees at Dion´s sculpture exhibition.

You note correctly that the technique is "very unusual." Indeed, to my knowledge it has never been done before -- and for a reason.

A Hollywood script consultant informed me the scene is impossible to film in America. Movie guilds and unions will never allow it. My response to him: "Then the movie will not be made in America."

My reasoning on that subject, Françoise, is identical to why I hope nonactors will be employed.

"Pillars of The Sea" is an imminently democratic movie out of step with our preeminently oligarchic times. Symbol drain; cultural rape; trivialization; postmodernism´s legitimization of the reigning oligarchy; constant reinforcement of Latin America´s ambivalence toward and rejection of its Indian origins, which perpetuates its condition of political and cultural dependency; the threat to oligarchs´ monetary self-interests by a political economy of reordered values: the reasons for not producing "Pillars" today are overwhelming. The plate is full.

The essential prerequisite for transforming that reality is well-known to our regular readers. The oligarchy will never permit it to be openly discussed in the mass media, which is why what you are about to see is found only in this blog:

"The First American Revolution, 1776-1789, transformed the political system from a monarchy not into a democracy but rather a “политей” or polity, i.e., a middle class-moderated, oligarchy/democracy hybrid inclined toward democracy. The Second American Revolution, 2008-2009, changed the polity into an oligarchy with democratic residues, accessories. That change was normal, predictable; Aristotle analyzed it 2000 years ago. The Third American Revolution will resurrect the polity but with greater power for democracy, less for the oligarchy."

The Third American Revolution will cause a new political and cultural landscape to emerge not only in the United States but also in Latin America.

In fact, throughout the world._______________*Anthony C. Zinni, “For the U.S. Military, War Isn’t What It Used to Be,” International Herald Tribune, July 21, 2000. **Jung´s concept of psychopomp, a mediator between conscious and unconscious realms, was headed in the right direction. It is neither here nor there, neither form nor content, neither "real" nor "unreal." Note that for Jung the midwife was a central psychopomp.***So as to avoid ideological tampering, my estate has strict instructions: (1) "Pillars of The Sea" must be produced exactly as is, with no changes except for typographical/grammatical errors. (2) No director, producer or other person can add his name as a script author or consultant. (3) No awards for the script can be accepted. "Pillars" is based on the creations of hundreds of anonymous story tellers over a millennium. There is no way such coauthors can be accredited properly.****Democracy in America I, Chapter XI, "In What Spirit Americans Cultivate the Arts."*****Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Penguin Books, London, 1997, p. 226.